


Cards Against The Avengers

by penandpage



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Cards Against Humanity, Gen, one big happy family au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-11
Updated: 2014-05-11
Packaged: 2018-01-24 08:21:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1598096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penandpage/pseuds/penandpage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"i want to see the avengers play cards against humanity and i want to see them all slowly realizing that steve has the most fucked up sense of humor out of all of them"<br/>             -Tumblr user bonzai-bunny</p>
<p>                                                                              Ask and you shall receive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cards Against The Avengers

**Author's Note:**

> So, I play Cards Against Humanity ALL THE TIME online (in fact, every card I mention is a real one because I went and played a few games for reference), but I've never played in real life. So this is a little bit haphazard, and I'm really hoping this is how gameplay ends up in reality. I have no idea what opening a brand new box would be like, I kind of had to go off of standard board/card game packaging and hope I was right. If not....well, I did my best, and that's all I can do. 
> 
> Also, One Big Happy Family AUs are the only AUs I want to hear about.

      "AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!" Clint exclaimed as he burst through the door, shaking a box so they could all hear what rattled inside.

      "Clint... Just... Don't do that," Natasha chided him, eyes rolling practically into the back of her head, but she tapped Bucky on the shoulder and they both left the kitchen island and shuffled over to the living room.

     Natasha sat in her favorite arm chair and folded her legs underneath her, while Bucky took the corner of the couch closest to her, which was coincidentally (yeah, right) beside Steve. Steve was sitting on the edge of his seat, pouring over a newspaper, and he objected when Clint carelessly pushed it and everything else off the coffee table, but truth be told he welcomed a distraction from the current state of reality. Bruce was on Steve's other side, leaning over his arm rest to talk to Tony, who was positioned the same way in his arm chair. No one understood a word they said.

     Clint pulled a cushion out from under the coffee table and plopped down on it. He held the sides of the box and let the bottom slide out from the lid and onto the table.

      "Is that Card's Against Humanity?" said Bruce curiously, turning away from Tony for the first time in at least an hour.

      "Yeah. I ordered it, like, a month ago. I can't believe it took this long to get here, but...y'know...FINALLY!" said Clint, picking up the instruction sheet and glancing over the front. He turned it over, skimmed the back and set it aside, choosing instead to run his hands reverently over the stack of cards.

      "What's Cards Against Humanity?" asked Steve, scooting back in his seat and nonchalantly resting his arm on the back of the couch behind Bucky.

      "Cards Against Humanity? Awesome!" Sam called, emerging from the bathroom, shaking water from his hands, and rushing over to take a seat on the floor next to Clint.

      "It's a card game, Steve," explained Natasha, leaning forward and snatching up the instructions.

      "Thanks. I gathered that," Steve sneered. Natasha smirked, but kept reading.

      "It's kind of a word game," piped up Tony. He leaned across the table and took up the stack of black cards which Clint had separated from the white. He pulled a card from the middle of the deck and held it up to show Steve what was on it. "You have one of these black cards and it says something like... **'What's that sound?'"**

      "...And then everyone plays a white card," said Sam, showing Steve a random one from the hand Clint had just finished dealing him. "It's gotta answer the question on the black card, or fill in the blank. Like this one, _'Special musical guest, Cher.'"_

     Bruce and Clint both chuckled at that, each looking over the cards in their hands. Sam picked up the deck of white cards and shuffled his example back into it and pulled a new one, for the sake of fairness.

      "The idea is to play the funniest combination. The person who played the black card shuffles all the white cards together and picks their favorite, and whoever played that gets a point," continued Tony, looking through his own hand.

     Natasha handed the instructions to Bucky, who read them carefully, brow knotted, chewing at the inside of his cheek. Picking up her hand, Natasha declared, "Clint plays online a lot. He's pretty good - "

      "Thanks, Tasha!" Clint interrupted jovially, grinning at her incredulously.

      "...But not as good as me," Natasha finished, fluttering her eyelashes and smiling smugly. Clint's expression turned sour, and he went back to reading his cards.

     Sam chuckled at one of his cards, then said, "Think Rhodey'll wanna play?"

      "Probably, but he's out patrolling. Seems to think my scanners aren't good enough to alert us of impending disaster," said Tony, rolling his eyes.

      "I know at least twelve people who could -" Bucky started, but Steve put his hand on his chest to stop him. They didn't need another fight like when Tony launched those scanners. This table was new.

      "They're not everywhere, Tony. Rhodey's doing good work out there. Just...let it go," Steve cautioned, though more to Bucky than Tony.

      "What about the big guy?" asked Clint, head turned sideways as he arranged his hand. "Anyone seen Thor lately?"

      "He's with Jane," Bruce explained, shuffling the black cards and then taking one off the top.

      "Wait, I...I still don't really understand the rules," interjected Steve, who hadn't even looked through the small pile of cards Clint had flung across the table at him.

      "Let's play a few rounds and you can see how it works," said Sam, tossing a white card down next to the black one. Steve and Bucky both agreed to sit it out while each of the others played a black card once (according to the rules, as Bucky showed Steve on the instruction sheet, this was called being the "Card Czar", which Bucky did not find particularly amusing) and they could get the hang of what was going on. Everyone had wildly different senses of humor, and it resulted in some pretty raucous laughter, though some of the cards played were clearly only meant for the shock factor. By the time the round finished and it was time for Steve and Bucky to join in, Steve had puzzled out that Tony was mainly playing not to win, but to attempt to make Steve uncomfortable. Two could play at that game.

     It started simple. The black card was, **____ sounds like a great alternative rock band.** Out of _Destroying the evidence, Testicular torsion, A LAN party, My mom,_ and _Tongue,_ Bruce chose Bucky's card ( _Passive aggression_ ). Steve's first win was the next round when the black card was, **Don't get mad, get ____.** and out of _Life on parole, Hot cheese, A WHOLE GALLON OF BOOBS, Mad hacky-sack skills,_ and _Eastern European Turbo-Folk music_ , Tony chose Steve's _A hopeless amount of spiders_. And the game continued.

     Before long, Steve had himself a tidy little pile of points. They hadn't tallied up yet, but he was pretty sure he was winning.  He had won **I can't believe I spent most of my paycheck on ____** with _The systematic destruction of an entire people and their way of life_ and **As king, how will I keep the peasants in line?** with _Gladiatorial combat_ (though Tony had come close, according to Card Czar Sam, with _Nickelback_ ).  On **When I was 25, I won an award for ____** he had played _Puberty,_ and it hadn't won because Clint had been Card Czar and he tended to go for the more immature answers (Bucky had won for _Injecting speed into one arm and horse tranquilizer into the other_ ), but it DID garner the biggest laugh when he told them all he'd been the one to play it. Bruce won **Coming to Broadway this season, ____: The Musical** with _Menstruation_ , and Natasha won **Science will never explain the origin of ____** with _God_. She won again when Steve picked out her  _Grave robbing_ and _Shopping_ for **It's fun to mentally replace the word ____ with ____,** and then Sam won **____ probably tastes better than Quiznos** when Natasha chose his _Gas station sushi._ Clint won **What is your mating call?** with _People with cake in their mouths talking about how good cake is,_ and then Steve won again with _Being a dinosaur_ on **I wish I hadn't lost the instruction manual for ____.** Tony, at this point, was becoming frustrated as he hadn't won since Steve had started playing, but he was quickly silenced when the black card was **I'm pretty sure I'm high right now, because I'm absolutely mesmerized by ____** and Steve chose his, _Upgrading homeless people to mobile hotspots._

      "Did you actually understand that?" laughed Clint.

      "I've been in the 21st century for three years, Clint. I know what WiFi is now," drawled Steve, moving backwards out of the way when Bucky leaned past him to draw a new card.

     The next black card was **When Pharaoh remained unmoved, Moses called down a plague of ____.** Bruce sighed as he looked through the white cards. Then he paused.

      "Uh..." he said, staring at a particular card like it might bite him.

      "What?" said Natasha, stretching to see what Bruce was holding.

     Separating the offending card from the others and holding it at arm's length, Bruce started,   "I...Wh...Who played - ?"

      "AH AH AH!" squawked Clint, waving his arms. "You have to pick first!"

     Bruce's eyes flashed up to look at Clint. He swallowed hard and looked back to the card in his hand. He shrugged saying, "Well...I guess it kind of is the funniest one, so..." He dropped it on the table next to the black card, and everyone leaned forward to see what it said.

_Poorly-timed Holocaust jokes._

      "Oh, that was me," Steve asserted simply. He drew himself a new card and passed one to Bucky, and both of them arranged their hands, momentarily oblivious to the silence around them. After about a minute, when he realized nobody else had drawn and Tony hadn't played a new black card, Steve looked up from his hand. Everyone was staring at him. "What?"

      "That was a little..." faltered Clint.

      "...Kind of over the line, Steve," Sam finished.

      "Oh, I...I know," admitted Steve, setting his cards on his knee. "I have kind of a crap hand at this point. I've had that one for ages; I was really just trying to get rid of it."

      "Right..." Bruce said, nodding but still looking at Steve as if his whole world view had just changed. Everyone shrugged and continued with the game.

     As they all chose responses to **What will always get you laid?** , Steve looked to his right to see Bucky staring him down. Bucky had seen some of his cards on his knee and knew he had plenty of good ones. He had also certainly seen Steve's face when he had originally pulled that card. He knew Steve had been saving that one, and that he wasn't ashamed of having played it. Steve glanced outward to make sure no one was looking, and then winked. Bucky shook his head and smiled wryly as he played his card and settled back into his seat. Clint won the round ( _Half-assed foreplay_ ), and a few sub-par rounds went by.

      "Finally!" Clint exclaimed as he pulled the new black card. "This one oughtta be good."

**Long story short, I ended up with ____ in my ass.**

     Everyone gave a chuckle, and then chose their cards. Clint picked them up, gave them a quick shuffle, and then looked through them. Suddenly, he threw them all back onto the table.

      "Okay, who the FUCK played, _'Homeless people'?!"_ he screamed, breaking his own rule.

      "That would be me again," said Steve, raising his hand. All eyes, even Natasha's, though not Bucky's (nothing could surprise him at this point), were once again on Steve, who just sat there grinning that big, stupid, winning smile. "What?" he laughed. "It's how the game works, right?"

      "You know, you're not quite right?" said Tony, staring, unblinking, at Steve in sheer indignation.

      "I've been telling him that since the 20's," claimed Bucky. He tapped Natasha on the knee. "Nat, you're the Card Czar."

     Natasha blinked hard, but she stretched out and pulled a black card from the top of the deck.

**"What did the U.S. airdrop to the children of Afghanistan?"** she read aloud, dropping the card onto the table. Everyone played their cards silently, shaken by the previous round. Natasha shuffled through them and smirked when she found the one she liked. She plopped _A piñata full of scorpions_ on the table beside the black card, and nudged Clint with her toe. "Nice one, you ass."

      "Actually, that was mine again," voiced Steve.

      "Oh," said Natasha. She frowned, and Bucky just started laughing. Everyone was looking at each other, as if they were begging the others to tell them this was an elaborate prank. Had they really not noticed Captain America's sense of humor was this messed up?

     Bucky was still chuckling as he reached out and drew a black card. It was the best possible card that could have been played. **Kids these days with their iPods and their Internet. In my day, all we needed to pass the time was ____.** What followed was a string of "Steve and Bucky are old" jokes from everyone else, which Bucky rolled his eyes at, but he paused and cocked his eyebrow, and Steve knew that he had found his submission. He had been saving that card for a while, too, and he bit the inside of his lip to stifle a grin as Bucky tossed it resignedly down on the table.

      "Who the HELL played THAT?" yelped Clint.

     The card said, _"The euphoric rush of strangling a drifter."_

     Everyone turned to Steve, who was shrugging and sort of fake-smiling with all of his teeth. The silence was deafening. Clint abruptly pushed all of the cards off the table, got to his feet, and left the room without a word.

      "Yeah, I'm out too," said Sam. He stood without looking anyone in the eye, and bounded out the door after Clint. The only sound heard for a few minutes was the distant _woosh_ of elevator doors opening and then the _clunk_ of them closing. Everyone stared at Steve, all of them completely dumbfounded, except Bucky. He was resting his face against his fist and looking from expression to expression, his amusement growing exponentially every time he went from Bruce's stupified disbelief to Tony's shocked outrage to Natasha's utter bewilderment (which was his favorite, because Natasha was not bewildered often, and he felt privileged to see it).

     Minutes went by. Tony, Natasha and Bruce never moved. Bucky's smile got wider. Steve just sat there, looking immensely pleased with himself. As far as he was concerned, whether or not he had accumulated more points than anyone else (he had), this was how one won this game. He was content to stay just like that forever, soaking in their indignation and shattered expectations. Finally, with just two words, Natasha broke the silence.

      "Jesus, Steve," she breathed.

     Bucky had never laughed that hard in his life.


End file.
